Green data center - News, Features, and Slideshows

News

• ARM servers still 'several years' away, its president says

  The president of ARM Holdings has sought to temper the expectations around ARM-based servers, saying those systems might not ship in volume before 2015.

• Intel sees opportunity from Asian data center boom

  Intel’s sale of chips and related products to data centers is growing by over 20 percent year-on-year in Asia-Pacific, on the back of increased data center capacity creation in China, South Korea, and Australia, a company executive said.

• The Green IT movement has lost the plot

  When it comes to environmental sustainability, the information technology community has seriously mistaken its priorities. Our latest research has confirmed what we have been saying for four years. The IT industry is already energy-neutral in terms of its consumption and savings, but there is still no credible scenario for safely managing the global production and disposal of literally billions of personal computers, mobile phones and other electronic devices. Yet even today, improving the energy efficiency of IT equipment is still the overwhelming focus of the Green IT community.

• 'Project Triforce': How Facebook tested its new data center

  When Facebook built its first company-owned data center in Prineville, Oregon, designing and managing the facility was only part of the challenge. In a blog post Monday, the company explained how it had to stress-test its entire software infrastructure by commandeering a giant cluster of production servers on the other side of the country.

• Data centers turn to outsourcing to meet capacity needs

  More large companies are turning to collocation providers to relieve capacity constraints in their data centers, as a way to avoid the high cost of building their own new brick-and-mortar facilities, two studies suggest.

• Data centers experiment with new power sources

  Data center power usage is soaring -- the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that data center energy requirements will double in the next five years. To address that surge in energy use, some companies are turning to alternative sources of energy, including solar arrays, natural gas turbines, wind power, fuel cells and hydro power. But one big question is whether these power sources will deliver a return on investment in the near future.

• Uptime exec: Data center ratings aid cloud choice

  Julian Kudritzki has more visibility than most into how the Uptime Institute's data center tier system is being used around the world, and according to him it's become a useful tool to help businesses find a reliable hosting provider for their applications.

• Cisco jumps into portable data center market

  Cisco Systems launched its first containerized data center on Monday, coming late to the party but offering some unique management features that could help set it apart from other vendors.

• Google invests in another wind farm for its data centers

  Google has invested in a wind farm in Oklahoma to help offset the environmental impact of its data centers, even as Greenpeace stepped up its criticism of big Internet companies for using "dirty power" that contributes to global warming.

• To boost data center efficiency, consider UPS consolidation

  In data center upgrade planning, backup power is often among the last considerations and the first budget item redlined. Many companies purchase an uninterruptible power system (UPS) only as they add equipment -- what we call a segmented approach. Before long, data center managers can find themselves with an inefficient power system that is difficult to maintain and daunting to improve, yet doing so can offer big returns.

• Facebook joins the ranks of industry's elite

  Facebook's start-up days are long behind it.

• HP expands energy and carbon monitoring services

  Hewlett-Packard on Thursday announced a new portfolio of services to determine and implement ways to cut energy costs and carbon emissions across organizations.

• What retailers can teach you about green IT

  A recent analysis by Retail Systems Research (RSR) sheds some light on how sustainability fits into corporate strategy at top-performing companies.

• Green memories accelerate ROI for data centers

  This vendor-written tech primer has been edited by Network World to eliminate product promotion, but readers should note it will likely favor the submitter's approach.

• HP puts on data center hard hat

  Hewlett-Packard wants to manage the construction phase of its clients' data center projects, hoping to expand its revenue from this area and, it says, help customers complete projects more quickly and for as much as 30 per cent lower cost.